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⭐ Core Definition: William Walton

Sir William Turner Walton OM (29 March 1902 – 8 March 1983) was an English composer. During a sixty-year career, he wrote music in several classical genres and styles, from film scores to opera. His best-known works include Façade, the cantata Belshazzar's Feast, the Viola Concerto, the First Symphony, and the British coronation marches Crown Imperial and Orb and Sceptre.

Born in Oldham, Lancashire, the son of a musician, Walton was a chorister and then an undergraduate at Christ Church, Oxford. On leaving the university, he was taken up by the literary Sitwell siblings, who provided him with a home and a cultural education. His earliest work of note was a collaboration with Edith Sitwell, Façade, which at first brought him notoriety as a modernist, but later became a popular ballet score.

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👉 William Walton in the context of Orchestration

Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra (or, more loosely, for any musical ensemble, such as a concert band) or of adapting music composed for another medium for an orchestra. Also called "instrumentation", orchestration is the assignment of different instruments to play the different parts (e.g., melody, bassline, etc.) of a musical work. For example, a work for solo piano could be adapted and orchestrated so that an orchestra could perform the piece, or a concert band piece could be orchestrated for a symphony orchestra.

In classical music, composers have historically orchestrated their own music. Only gradually over the course of music history did orchestration come to be regarded as a separate compositional art and profession in itself. In modern classical music, composers almost invariably orchestrate their own work. Two notable exceptions to this are Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's solo piano work Pictures at an Exhibition and Malcolm Arnold's orchestration of William Walton's String Quartet in A minor, producing the latter's Sonata for Strings.

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⭐ Core Definition: William Walton
👉 William Walton in the context of Orchestration
William Walton in the context of Chamber opera

William Walton in the context of Chamber opera

Chamber opera is a designation for operas written to be performed with a chamber ensemble rather than a full orchestra. Early 20th-century operas of this type include Paul Hindemith's Cardillac (1926). Earlier small-scale operas such as Pergolesi's La serva padrona (1733) are sometimes known as chamber operas.

Other 20th-century examples include Gustav Holst's Savitri (1916). Benjamin Britten wrote works in this category in the 1940s when the English Opera Group needed works that could easily be taken on tour and performed in a variety of small performance spaces. The Rape of Lucretia (1946) was his first example in the genre, and Britten followed it with Albert Herring (1947), The Turn of the Screw (1954) and Curlew River (1964). Other composers, including Hans Werner Henze, Harrison Birtwistle, Thomas Adès, George Benjamin, William Walton, and Philip Glass have written in this genre.

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William Walton in the context of "Orchestration"

⭐ In the context of Orchestration, William Walton is considered…

⭐ Core Definition: William Walton

👉 William Walton in the context of Orchestration

William Walton in the context of Chamber opera